Exhibition

‘Jaume Plensa: Poetry of Silence’

18/04/2023

Photo: Alice Brazzit. Images courtesy of Fundació Catalunya La Pedrera

On view through 23 July at La Pedrera-Casa Milà in Barcelona is a retrospective that comprises over 100 works by Jaume Plensa (Barcelona, 1955), curated by Javier Molins. Besides actual exhibition halls, the pieces on display – dated between 1988 and the present – take up different spots in Antoni Gaudí’s building, striking up a dialogue with it. The thread is literature, especially poetry, tackling themes that recur in the Catalan artist’s oeuvre, such as silence, sleep, desire, music, and family.

Literature has always been a source of inspiration for Plensa. T. S. Eliot, William Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, and Vicent Andrés Estellés are some of the writers he has drawn from. Letters of different alphabets are an element making up his sculptures.